Seen Floating on the Seine, Some Prussian Cadavers

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "November 1870"

V

Yes, you have arrived, and here you lie.
Here you are caressed, carried, kissed, bent over
on the duck-down pillow of soft, deep waters.
Here you, beneath the cold, wet sheets of the waves,
sons of the North, rest naked on the sleeping flood!
Soldiers, cradled thus, you close your blue eyes
     to this gentle rocking.
You had said: “Let’s go to the house of the prostitute.
Babylon, whose custom it is to kiss everyone,
is over there; it abounds in laughter, in songs;
this is where we shall take our pleasure. O Saxons,

O Germans, towards the South
     let us turn our oblique glance.
Quickly! In France! Paris, this public city,
who for strangers adorns and embellishes herself,
will open her arms to us.”—

Pale fish, the Seine is their bed.